Palm released today its newest smartphone, the Treo Pro, which targets the business segment of the mobile market. The company presented its product as an extremely useful tool as "It allows users to structure their life around their priorities without sacrificing work productivity," according to an e-mail received by InternetNews.com from a Palm spokesperson.

The Treo Pro is the thinnest model from its line and the company assured its customers that the efforts to slim it down did not affect in any way its features and functionality.

The device has a shiny, glossy and attractive black case and offers 3G, a full QWERTY keyboard, a micro USB cable, one-touch Wi-Fi, a 2 Mega-Pixels photo camera, GPS, dedicated e-mail and calendar buttons and the newest version of Windows Mobile.

The company responded to the many comparisons made between its device and the Blackberry Bold, saying: "Being a RIM device, the BlackBerry Bold will use RIM’s network operations center meaning it will be subject to the same highly publicized email outages RIM suffered a few times this year," Palm stated. "By using the Microsoft Exchange Server, the Treo Pro, like all Palm devices, will not," Palm said.

One of its main problems is connected to the company’s refusal to enlarge the 320x320 screen, which has been used for one too many models. The issue is that when users possess a device that allows Web browsing and many other features, they want to get a clear view of their actions and be able to easily navigate on a Web page or look at a photo. So even though the phone is equipped with a high-resolution and full-color touch-screen, the size might put off many potential customers.

Looking at the screen size one might think that the device wins some extra points with its total size. Unfortunately, it is a bit longer than the Blackberry and actually fatter than the iPhone.

The battery used is the company’s biggest ever, measuring 4.49 inches by 2.36 inches wide and providing five hours of talk time and around 250 hours of standby. Even though it ensures a long term functionality, its size is a bit larger than users might expect.

The device runs on high-speed UMTS/HSDPA network capabilities and lists a series of other interesting elements, such as Microsoft’s Direct Push Technology, its compatibility with Excel, PowerPoint, PDF files and Word, Microsoft’s System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 and numerous other applications available through the use of the Windows Mobile operating system.

At this point, the Treo Pro is available on the company’s official online store for the price of $549 and is expected to hit the U.S. market by the end of this year’s third quarter. Palm refused to disclose any information about the carrier chosen "We are not announcing any U.S. carriers at this time," Palm’s officials said.

AT&T also refused to address the issue, telling InternetNews.com that it will not comment on devices "that may or may not launch with AT&T."